Any of my Truman folks heard from Tiffani lately?

Your thoughts? I can't raise her on MSN at the moment, and am not feeling the email vibe at the moment, so merely wish to speculate on a sometimes-working comment board.

Oh, for the good ol' days

The new air conditioner makes the house a frigid Alaskan wasteland.


Not that there's anything wrong with Alaskan wastelands.

And no new ticks when you're in a boat!

Around eight-thirty this morning my job became the grooviest ever, as I spent most of my work day out on the river, crusing along, getting muddy (I was in charge of making sure the boat didn't drift off while someone else got out to place MDC signs on the bank), and enjoying the banter of a guy who looked and acted like Gene Hackman in "The Royal Tennenbaums" and a younger guy who looked like Shawn from high school.

Did I mention I was paid for this? And not Wal-mart prices?

Anyway, this is the golden two week period between setting out gypsy moth traps (finished last Thursday) and non-stop checking (after the 4th, in July) where my brother generally ended up with campsite clean-up. I, however, have been blessed by the Forestry department by riding around on landowner visits (I spent over an hour in the car to ride to some lady's house to spend approximately five minutes on why her tree died and fifteen minutes on her grandchildren), general Forestry errands, and now river work. I'm prunning things tomorrow.

This is way better than being stuck in a car 8+ hours daily. Though that's still better than Wal-Mart fulltime.

Cleaning out the Closet

I just pulled every pair of shoes I own out of my closet.

There's fifty-nine pairs of shoes on my floor at the moment.


[Embarrassing first thought: I need another pair of shoes for an even sixty. Anybody want to lend a girl a ten?]

This doesn't mean I won't get as lost as before.

I put out my last gypsy moth trap on Thursday afternoon around 1:15 in the middle of nowhere at the bottom of Franklin County. The last time I'd been close to that grid (around trap 30), the road had flooded just before the square actually started, and I'd been forced to turn around. Yesterday, I plopped trap 306 across the road from an open gate, just down the street from where the angry dogs had chased me back into my car.

I figure that was a good place to earn a break from the trap business.

Starting on Monday (after a stint talking about moths to second through fifth graders at summer school), I'm moving into the purely forestry business for two weeks. [Technically, gypsy moth falls under "resource science" instead of "forestry." Whatever.] I'm probably hitting some campsite clean-up, I've been invited on some forestry visits, and who knows what else. For all I know, I'll end up slumming it up at the office, doing paperwork for the secretaries, but I don't mind as long as they continue paying me. Which, you know, they kinda have to by law and stuff.

Score one for the government, at least.

I've suddenly gone southern with excitement

(Yes, this is another third grade girl thing.)

Though I'd dig the convertible and having Hugh Jackman as a close, family friend, I'm relived that my life won't actually turn out like my last MASH game since I don't think I'd enjoy life married to David Kromery, living with our nine kids in Iraq.


[What? I can make up categories if I want, and "famous friend" is one of my better creations. "Super power" isn't half bad, either.]

Featuring few helpful details...like real news!

To sum up my day gypsy moth trapping, have a helping of news, headline only style!

* Squirrels Extra-Suicidal Monday Afternoon

* Newly-Fixed Air Conditioning Car's Best Feature

* "So close to finished, it's not funny," says Trapper Smith, 20.

* How's the Weather Over There, Bessie: Four Cows Share One Shade Tree

* Missed Turn Equals End of Day, Trip Home

Attention Wal-Mart Customers!

I solemly believe that, if the customers would just look at all the other towels [rugs, washclothes, etc] under the one they were examaining for whatever reason and then actually made an effort to re-fold the item the way all the others under it had been folded, us Wal-Mart employees back in domestics wouldn't hate people so entirely much because we could spend more time doing productive work and less time bitterly refolding towels.

Why do I always find these things late at night?

This is more than a little cool and now I'll never get to bed before eleven like I was aiming.

Blinding News Flash!

I have new socks! And I was stuck in a sand road for over two hours today at the top of the county!

What? You want to know more? Okay, two have cows, one with ducks, one has pink stripes and frogs, another features monkeys.


Oh. Sand. Right.

So, I was basically trying to turn around after fruitlessly driving around on a gravel road at the complete top of Franklin county (in one of the pointy bits and everything) trying to set out a trap in that particular grid square. However, all the trees were *close* to the road, but not really decently close enough, especially when interspearsed amongst all the fields of corn or lollipops or whatever. I'd finally had enough and began looking for a place to turn around when I noticed a side road (it looked like a simple dirt road) coming up on the right. I pulled into it thinking I could use it to back up and turn back toward town...when I realized the car wasn't reversing. Instead, it was shooting a rather impressive stream of watery sand into the air approximately where the tires are located.

Cue mini panic moment. Also cue mini pathetic moment: I actually tried to dig the sand out from around the wheels with the ice scraper kept in the car no matter the season. Truly pathetic and unsuccessful. I eventually gave up and started the long walk back into the town, where I jumped on the first people I saw for help. They made a couple phone calls looking for someone and eventually queried a friend walking down the street.

Thus began the search for a tractor.

Joey, the guy pulled off the street, began a [mirroring the rest of the saga] long and ultimately pointless search for his boss, the farmer, to borrow a tractor to pull the poor car out of the sand trap. Giving up, we drove out to the scene of the incident so he could analyze the next step. As I am clueless about cars and therefore couldn't explain any problems to him, this was a brilliant idea.

This is the part with lots of digging. And rain. And digging in the rain, which isn't as movie-like as singing. Somewhere in here a shovel was fetched, a brother showed up (who remembered rescuing my own brother from a close spot farther out the previous year), and a chain became attached to a van to assist the re-moving backwards.

After two hours, I was finally ready to continue on to New Haven and my sand-less life. Sure, I still don't have a trap in that box, but I think I might write that one off as a personal choice to ignore the grid, just this once.

I've forgotten what I was going to say here

While it *has* completely vaporized from my brain exactly what I wanted to elaborate further on, it took so long for this single box to load that I don't feel like closing it yet. Perhaps inspiration with strike.

Meanwhile, back to email.

***

Ooh...new Truman Today available. I don't know that there's enough going on to warrent a newsletter, but still.

All sorts of other email: Brian, John, and Ben all emailed me back from my gigantic mass email. Now I'll probably be up for another half hour. I'm never going to catch up on my sleep from staying up to watch the Tony Awards until 2-ish on Sunday night/Monday morning (hey, that's when I got off Wal-Mart plus three-four hours of show time).

That reminds me! All I really wanted to say was I'm glad I'm twenty so I don't have to feel guilty about thinking "stupid teenagers" every single time one drives badly and or just does something insipid, but I think I've dived [dove? jumped, that works] into insipid territory myself.

I'm going to publish now before I embarrass myself further.

Scar City, here I come!

One of the hazards of my job is, while I can avoid poison ivy, et al. by not going near it and other helpful methods, I'm constantly traipsing through weeds, plant life, and basic grass. I can't whip out my magnifying glass and check for things that would turn my legs itchy. Sure, I use bug spray, but I still manage to find ticks (all around my *toes* of all places), chiggers, etc attached to myself because that's nature's little gift to lil' ol' me.

There were entirely too many apostraphes in that last sentence.

Anyway, these precious gifts of the universe wouldn't be such a bugger [unintended pun that I'm keeping now that I noticed it] if I didn't instictively scratch the living daylights out of each and every itch I have. No matter how much I tell myself to leave my various bug bites alone (and no matter how much medicine I slather on), I continue to itch at them without any hesitation.

Basically, they've gotten to the "blood-then scab" stage. My left ankle looks particularly heinous, almost like something quite sharp ended up shoved in my leg just above my ankle bone. As gross as each one is--and as many band-aids as I've used and tossed--part of me (the punk rock princess, butterfly temporary tattoo side) hopes the nasty bug bites will turn into interesting scars. I mean, all I have so far in life as some barely visible scissor nicks and the mole removal line gradually disappearing off my right leg. How can I even begin to compete with other people? I know people who've drilled holes in their fingers! I know someone who (admittedly accidentally) gashed open his wrist when he dropped a medieval weapon!

At least I have cool bruise stories.

and, just like real previews, they promote little of what is actually written!

How much has changed since I wrote about gypsy moth traps last? I enjoy paperwork now, one of the few things I remember about the training day (besides the scary bug that was tiny but moved like a race car all over my stuff) is that the fact that the moths are roaming the US is because of the French, and I've given up picking the confetti-sized orange dots off my floor until I'm finished constructing all my traps and never have to deal with them again.

Anyway.

This has the possibility of being remembered as the Best Summer Job Ever, as I've had very little Stoopid People contact (a major point always against Wal-Mart, always). I'm in the car all day, but that equals instant radio time, and no one could understand how flahoolickly awesome that is for me. Or how many songs I want to download now. I still haven't broken out with poison ivy, but I think that's because I'm OCD-ish about watching where I walk and checking the backs of trees before my hands go anywhere near the other side. It may not feature a discount card (a major point pro-Wal-Mart), but I've recent taken up employment with the blue vests again and have the best of both worlds.

Yeah, okay, so I know I'd decided against Wal-Mart for the summer, but the issue of London sent me scurrying back into Homelines for the weekends. I think I'm going to start pulling 10-hour days trapping to create an instant day off during the week, but we'll see how it works out. There are many things I can handle, especially if they only last one summer.

Elsewhere in life, I've been "helping" install the new windows in the house. It's similar to stagecraft: I hold heavy stuff in place for longer than my arms would like as someone else tries to measure level and evenness before I watch someone else pound it all together. I've had oodles of ladder quality time and bonded with the ancient shop vac yesterday evening. The windows are nice (thanks, Pella!), but there's still five more to go, and that includes the two biggest.

Finally, sometime I'll have the time to impliment my new so-beyond-OCD music organization system that will only make sense to myself and includes sub-sub-subcategories, so we know I'll love it. I even sat down and created a *flow chart,* it's that complicated. Perhaps I'll mess with that on those days I "take off" during the week?

A List to Start Things Off Again

Animals that Tried^ to Commit Suicide by Jumping in Front of the Car*

* 3 deer
* 5 wild turkeys
* 2 lizards
* 4 cats
* 9~ squirrels
* 3 rabbits
* 1 chicken
* two many turtles^^ to count


^unsuccessfully, thanks
*so far
~this number proves that, which Truman houses some truly psychotic squirrels, they are smarter than the average Missouri squirrel
^^technically they don't jump

"I don't care if it is some misguided scientist" (or another joke only two people will understand)

If this fly doesn't quit zooming around my head, buzzing its tinny fly noise and forcing me to use my hair like a horse's tail, and if I continue to be unable to kill it, I'm just going to have to move out of my room.

"Come get the nice dead ferret."

Yes, I realize I haven't posted in two weeks (and then some), and I promised stuff and everything--and have more where that came from ("What, Hannah, you ARE working at Wal-Mart this summer after all?"), but I just got back from the third Harry Potter movie (God bless the movie theater employee free preview night screening, and the bringing of friends to such!) and it was fabulous and I'm all keyed up and want to re-read the third book all over again, even though I just finished it a few weeks ago, to remember what they left out AND figure out what they put in seeing as, according to J.K. Rowling's website (have you not been there? go immediately!), the director dude added stuff that he didn't know alluded to things in the last two books but totally do allude to the last two books and I want to know what they were.

Well, that and once I've hit this time of night and am not asleep yet (especially after eating popcorn and drinking lots of caffeine), I tend to feel quite awake and with it, even if I do write such nonsense like that above.

Harry Potter 3 - go see it now! (Well, not now--I doubt it's showing at the moment. Maybe another time zone.....)